I've managed to miss writing anything about the Ashes this winter, which I suppose is just as well. If you can't speak well of the dead, say nothing at all - or something like that. It's been an absolute bloody mess from an English point of view, but even that doesn't stop me enjoying my holiday by being able to stay up a bit and follow the cricket from afar. In fact, so far tonight sounds like about the best session of the series for England - Ponting and Hussey both out for single figures. And in fact, Clarke goes too as I write. Time to turn on the radio I reckon.
I've started reading the book I got for Christmas about 'The Long Emergency'. The full title is 'SUrviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty First Century'. PArticularly relevant is the concept of cognitive dissonance, applied to a society - in fact, to a species. Essentially this comes down to ignoring the broader context of what is happening in your environment in order to focus on the smaller - perhaps, more handleable, details. And so most folks worry about how to pay the rent, or the mortgage, and miss the disasters looming over us. I guess it's a survival mechanism as well to some extent, but one which is actually leading us into disaster.
Time to evolve again I reckon.
